


A Con-certed effort

by a_la_grecque



Category: Fangirl - Rainbow Rowell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 08:18:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13050132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_la_grecque/pseuds/a_la_grecque
Summary: Cath receives an invitation to MageCon that Levi, Reagan, and Wren can't refuse.





	A Con-certed effort

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Onthecyberseas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Onthecyberseas/gifts).



> Thanks for coming up with such a fun prompt - I hope this fulfils some of your Yuletide desires! Contains some small Snowverse canon details from Carry On.

It seemed so innocent to start with, just an easily ignored email that slid into her inbox unexpectedly. It was midterm week, she was trying to finish up an assignment for Professor Piper, Levi needed her help with studying for a big test, and she was trying to lay some groundwork for a new Baz and Simon fic that was taking shape far too slowly for her liking and for her subscribers over at Fanfixx. All too easy to leave that one unread. What was one more unread message when life had so much to offer.

They got harder to ignore, of course. By this point she was almost doing it out of habit, she was almost sure it was junk mail anyway, who would ever be sending her special invitations to anything? After everything that happened before junior year in high school, she didn’t even want to think about it. Finally one day she got a notification in her Fanfixx account. She'd gone over to Levi's to study, which meant that Levi was lying on the bed listening to a lecture while she curled up on the loveseat and tried to write.

'Leave me alone,' she muttered. It must have been louder than she thought because Levi sat up with a noise of protest.

'Cather, I'm not even attempting to do anything, so someone must be bothering you on the internet.'

He lunged towards her and Cath panicked suddenly, thinking he might grab the laptop right out of her hands and start opening things. Surely he knew that only Wren was allowed to grab the laptop?

Apparently he did know that, but he thought it was just fine to come around behind her and read over her shoulder before she could navigate away from the tab. 

‘ What’s MageCon?’ he asked.

‘It’s nothing important.’ 

‘If it has to do with Simon Snow it must be important.’ 

Luckily for Cath Levi was easy to distract. She tucked her head under his chin and pulled him closer, and soon he seemed to have forgotten all about it.   


Cath should have known better. Later that week they were more or less repeating their early study session, except this time they were in Cath’s room and Reagan was there too. And Levi wasn’t so much studying as eating peanut butter with a spoon (Reagan had bought Cath a huge jar of it as a dorm-warming gift) and twitting them both about Reagan’s new habit of asking Levi to wait in the hall if Cath wasn’t there. Wren slipped into join them at some point - she didn’t even knock before coming in these days, never mind waiting outside outside, but Cath liked it that way. Cath was still trying to figure out the finer points of her future fic and was letting the conversation wash over her until Levi jolted her back to full attention. 

‘Hey Wren, what’s MageCon?’ 

Wren looked blindsided for a moment before she answered. ‘It’s only the biggest Simon Snow con in the Midwest. Why, is Cath trying to get you to go?’   


‘No, kind of the opposite actually. She’s getting some messages about it but she wouldn’t talk about them.’ 

‘Cath!’ Wren crossed the room in about half a second, and almost before Cath knew it, her laptop was gone. “Tell me this isn’t what I think it is.” 

Her fingers flew over the keys and Cath accepted that any further resistance was futile, Wren was going to force her into reading the message one way or another. In fact, Wren read it to her: 

_ Dear Magicath, _

_ I'm writing on behalf of the organising team at MageCon, and we'd love to have you join one of our panels at our next edition over the summer in Des Moines. We're putting together a panel focusing on Baz/Simon and how the ship’s changed after Eighth Dance, and as long time fans of your work we think you'd be absolutely perfect as a participant. _

_ Check out our website for more information about dates and details, and please let me know as soon as possible if you think you'd be interested in joining the panel... _

Wren broke off with a squeal.  ‘Cath, I can’t believe this is actually happening!” 

Even knowing she was in for a fight, it warmed something in Cath to see that Wren was still a bit of a fangirl at heart. 

‘I thought-’ 

‘And  _ I _ thought-’ 

‘But you-’   


‘...and you-’ 

‘Uh, some of us here don’t speak twin,’ Reagan said, ‘Can we get a translation?’ 

In the end it was Wren who explained, it still gave Cath squirmy feelings to think about it. They’d planned to go to MageCon as a sweet sixteen gift to each other, right down to figuring out which panels they were going to attend and whose autographs they would get. Scouring through the programme, they’d made a pact with each other that one day they’d get their names in there too. And then their dad had ended up in St. Richard’s again. Their grandmother would only let them attend if they both went, and Cath had flatly refused to leave their dad on his own in there. Deep down, Cath had a sneaking, snarling suspicion that right there was when the first cracks had started to form between her and Wren. It hurt to think about it. 

‘You realise you have to go, right? You’ll be fulfilling our pact and besides, you still owe me one,’ Wren said.

‘Cath.’ Levi’s eyes were wide and his mouth impossibly doll-like. ‘You definitely have to go.’ 

‘You have to go because if you don’t, these two are never going to stop talking about it,’ Reagan added. 

Cath sighed. ‘Shouldn't we at least check the dates first? Maybe it will clash with finals week or something important.’

‘I thought nothing was more important than Simon Snow?’ Levi and Wren grinned at each other. 

Of course there was nothing more important than Simon Snow, and they knew Cath would fold like a cheap umbrella.   


‘I think we should all go,’ said Levi, ‘it would be a great time for a roadtrip.’ 

‘And I can finally put together that Agatha cosplay,’ Wren said. 

‘Cosplay?’ Reagan asked, looking like she didn’t really want to know.

‘Trust me,’ Wren said, ‘You’re going to love it.’ 

***

Cath's hands were shaking as they moved down the line of panel participants, and she could feel the anxiety twisting inside her like she'd somehow swallowed a nest of snakes. It was too late to get up and run, she decided. Knowing her luck she'd trip and fall flat on her face, and that had to be worse than just going through with the panel. Probably.

The person next to her (she should remember the name, they'd all been introduced in the green room a half an hour earlier, but she could barely remember her own name at this point) had already started talking. Time was doing that strange thing it did sometimes, slowing to a crawl and then speeding up and racing in giant steps when she wasn't looking. It was almost her turn already. This couldn't be happening. She took a deep shaky breath and wondered how she'd ever managed to let herself get into such a stupid situation.

She’d actually tried to get out of it by asking Wren to stand in for her, like she'd persuaded her to do once for a prize giving speech in grade school. Wren had just looked at her like she'd lost it completely before refusing point blank, she had far better plans for the con than being Cath’s body double and anyway, didn't Cath realise that nobody knew what Magicath looked like so there was no need to use a twin as a stand-in, anyone would do? Unfortunately Cath's options for anyone were more or less limited to Reagan, and that was no option at all. And so she found herself terrified in room 12B of a featureless Des Moines convention centre. 

She’d been as good as her word, her cosplay was a hit and she’d barely had the chance to squeeze Cath’s hand for luck in the lobby that morning before she got deluged by photo requests. Reagan had disappeared completely, Cath had an outraged text from Wren on their first night to say she’d gone back to their hotel room to find Reagan in bed with the actor who played Premal, and none of them had really seen Reagan since. 

Cath risked a look around the room, hoping for a friendly pair of eyes. Not just any friendly eyes, either, she only wanted to see Levi's. She was sure he had to be there somewhere. In the morning he'd been threatening to stake out the front row with a sparkly fan sign for her, even going so far as to make a mocked up version out of the hotel stationery. She'd flushed to the roots of her hair at the thought of it, and he'd raised his hands in mock surrender when she told him that he would be far too distracting. She'd told him not to come at all rather than do that, and he'd just laughed and said he'd compromise if she let him distract her in their hotel room instead. Surely he hadn't taken that seriously?

She scanned the room more intently, there were more friendly faces out there than she'd expected, in fact there were more faces than she'd expected in general, the place was packed. Part of Cath expected nothing less, after all who wouldn't want to talk about Baz and Simon's obvious love for each other, but a more rational part of her insisted that this should have been a niche event, and that she'd only agreed to attend because there should by rights have only been a handful of people there. She couldn't find Levi in any of the rows of seats, but then she finally spotted a familiar figure slouching in the doorway.

Of course he'd be there, one hand messing up his hair and the other holding onto a ball. He tossed it up in the air and caught it again, and for one second Cath had an absurd thought that the Insidious Humdrum had come for her. Then Levi smiled and it filled her up with warmth right to the brim. She reached out for the microphone that was being handed to her and began to speak.


End file.
